Laminar flow is the smooth, uninterrupted flow of air over the contour of wings, fuselages, or other parts of an aircraft in flight. Laminar flow is most often found at the front of a streamlined body. If the smooth flow of air is interrupted, turbulence is created, which can result in drag acting on the body. Increases in deviation away from optimal laminar flow at aircraft surfaces can result in an increase in fuel consumption, and therefore a commensurate increase in cost of operation.
Many known aircraft engines, for example jet engines and turbofan jet engines are surrounded by an annular, barrel-shaped nacelle. At least some known nacelles include a lipskin at the leading edge, or inlet, of the nacelle. While some large structures have been formed in a unitary fashion to reduce transverse weld lines or other couplings that could impact laminar flow, such unitary forming processes (e.g. spin-forming, etc.) are time-consuming, expensive and difficult or impractical in terms of size limitations for producing spin-formed lipskins of a desired, large size. Further, spin-formed lipskins may exhibit undesirable waves or ripples that could adversely affect laminar flow, leading to undesirable turbulence, increased fuel consumption, and/or increased cost of operation.
In attempts to solve the potential restrictiveness of spin-forming or other processes, some known methods for lipskin construction for aircraft engine nacelles have included the introduction of friction stir welds during lipskin construction, followed by removal of the welds during shaping, finishing, and other manufacturing processes, and further followed by the introduction of additional coupling components and parts (e.g. doublers). However, additional processing steps are often time-consuming, and the addition of parts in an aircraft assembly is often undesirable due to the commensurate increase in weight, assembly complexity, manufacturing time, additional inspections, etc., all of which can increase the overall cost of operating and maintaining the aircraft.